I got Dave Marsh’s book Trapped: Michael Jackson and the Crossover Dream. It's everything Susan Woodward's book "Otherness" claimed it is. A book length of anti-MJ bile from a white rock critic whom Thriller's success apparently pushed into an existential crisis. Lmao.
I'm not reading it out of masochism, I just want to get a first hand view of how MJ's success had the media establishment pressed even as far back as in 1985. It's an interesting document because it's before any of the later controversy , so you can't blame the vitriol on that.
But boy, there is VITRIOL! Just one typical page from the book. Yes, he predicted that Thriller's success was a fluke and no one would care about MJ in the future. How's that holding up in 2025? Lol. 
It's a book length rant like this. It's quite fascinating actually, in the fascinating train wreck way. LOL.
It's not about MJ, of course. It's more about the mindset of his media critics like Marsh (who was from the Rolling Stone-establishment, among others).
It's not about MJ, of course. It's more about the mindset of his media critics like Marsh (who was from the Rolling Stone-establishment, among others).
Marsh spends a big portion of the book ranting about how MJ isn't representing black music "in the right way", accusing him of things like not being aware of black music and its traditions.
Mind you, Marsh is a white boomer and never tells us what he bases this bold assumption on. Nor does he ever tell us what makes him qualified to police black music and how a black artist expresses himself. It looks like he wanted MJ to be some kind of black Bruce Springsteen.
Marsh also accuses MJ of being ignorant of anti-black racism in America. Which is again, astonishingly arrogant and condescending from a white man.
And of course, it's not true either. What Marsh despises in MJ the most, his open aspiration for commercial success, was actually very much related to MJ's awareness of racism, as MJ himself wrote in a personal note to himself around that time.
The irony here is that when MJ refers to magazines that wouldn't have black people on their cover because they supposedly "don't sell", Rolling Stone (where Marsh and other like minded critics worked) was most certainly among those.
So on the one hand, the gatekeeping music media establishment told black artists they wouldn't put them on cover because "they don't sell", but they also faulted MJ for aspiring to sell so many that he couldn't be ignored and rejected...
I really hope this dynamic and the hypocrisy of the establishment music media at the time will be brought forward somehow in the biopic.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
